10 September 1989
E & O E PROOF ONLY
It's a fight which I am not prepared to give up. It's a fight which I am not prepared to lose. There is no question my friends there is no question my friends of this being a fight between Bob Hawke and the pilots, between a Government and the pilots, this is a fight, a dispute about the very nature of the future of our country. Whether we are going to be intelligent enough to realise that all the things that we have been able to achieve together by cooperation, by the preparedness of ordinary working men and women to put their interests in the context of the interests of a nation as a whole, whether that is going to survive or whether we are going back to a jungle, a jungle where the powerful in the industrial movement can exercise their power to their own short term advantage. That's what this is about. It's about the future of Australia. It is a dispute which none of us can afford to lose.